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Easiest Way To Create A Composite Image In Photoshop

So as promised in my last post, I am going to explain to you step by step how to create a composite image in Photoshop. I have also made a recording of the steps I take to show you.

I will be using the same image from my last post, and for those of you who haven’t had the chance to see it, we will be creating the froggy pose using two different images and combining them together in Photoshop.

STEP 1

Open both images in Photoshop that you are going to combine to create the one photo. Using the select and move tool, drag one of the images on top of the other, not worrying about it’s position as we are going to fix this in the next step.

STEP 2

Once you have the two images in the same tab, make sure the image you just dragged on top is selected, then click the Layer tab from the top menu, click on Layer Mask and select Reveal All. You should now see a new white layer mask beside your layer in the layers window.

STEP 3

Making sure that the white layer mask is selected, adjust the opacity down to 50%. You should now be able to see both images. Using your move tool, line up the top image with the image underneath so that they are positioned perfectly together. You may need to slightly rotate or zoom in or out if you have not used a tripod to take two exact same images.

STEP 4

Once you have both images lined up with each other and you are happy, make sure your white layer mask is selected and hit CTRL + I. This will invert you layer mask so you can now only see the original image that was underneath the one you dragged in.

STEP 5

Making sure your brush is set to default colours, using a soft white brush paint over the parts of the image you want removed. In this case it is the hand holding the head. This will reveal the other image you lined up before. If it isn’t perfect, you can try again making sure to line them up more precisely, otherwise well done, you did it!

As you can see, it is super easy and extremely fast to do once you get the hang of it. I will go through different types of composites over the next few months to show you some advanced techniques when using digital backdrops. For now, I hope this has helped you and I can’t wait to share my next post on how I make my DIY wooden floor and back drops! Feel free to comment below, I’d love to hear from you!